Banda music: Fuerte and hot in S.A.

Updated 8:09 am, Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Late night on any given Sunday, along a usually quiet stretch of San Pedro Avenue just south of North Star Mall, traffic can come to a near halt at a nightclub called El Fuerte.

Flares on the street, a security cop directing traffic, lots of decked-out Latinos walking up the dark hill toward a gaudy flashing neon sign and the pulsing DJ music mean something's going on.

Parking is nearly impossible to find. Once inside the place, it's a challenge to move, the crazed music is loud and the dance floor is packed. They're not dancing to Skrillex or Lady Gaga. The throng is dancing to banda and other traditional sounds: regional Mexican, norteño, cumbia and ranchera music.

This is the world where Jenni Rivera was queen. The music now dominates in the land of Tejano and reveals a vibrant, underground side of Latino nightlife.

When Rivera, a banda diva and mun2 reality TV star, died in a plane crash a week ago, many had never heard of her or the music — even here, where she played a sold-out show at Club Fuego, a far West Side banda nightclub, in 2008.

It's not so unlike when Tejano queen Selena was murdered March 31, 1995. “I feel bad for the family,” said Abraham Quintanilla, Selena's father. “We know exactly how it feels. We went through that.”

Rivera, 43, was on the cusp of breaking into the mainstream, but not because of her upbeat, brass-driven sound. An ABC sitcom deal was in the works.

It's been reported that her banda albums — Rivera was known as La Diva de la Banda — had achieved sales topping 15 million units. Those figures are unverifiable, as they come from nonreporting outlets and from outside the United States, said a Billboard expert.

Nielsen SoundScan reported U.S. sales of 1.2 million albums over Rivera's nearly 20-year career. By comparison, Taylor Swift's latest album, “Red,” sold 1.2 million copies in its first week, according to Nielsen Soundscan.

“The fact that the mainstream didn't know about Jenni Rivera, an artist that had been working for so long and achieved such success and whose story was fascinating, is not surprising,” said Angie Romero, senior entertainment and culture editor at Univision Network in Los Angeles, via email.

“But I do find it interesting how they were all, from major networks like E! News to smaller blogs like Hollywood Life, tripping over themselves to cover the story of her death. It shows we are moving in the right direction. Still, there is a lot of catching up to do.”

Tejano's glory days

Tejano music grew out of the Chicano rock and Tex-Mex scene of the 1970s and 1980s known as La Onda Chicana (The Chicano Wave) and heralded by acts such as Little Joe y La Familia, Los Blues, Sunny & the Sunliners, the Latin Breed, Esteban “Steve” Jordan and the Texas Tornados.

The term “Tejano” came into vogue in 1981 with the first Tejano Music Awards held in San Antonio. Among its earliest stars were Mazz, La Sombra and La Mafia.

The true golden age of Tejano ran from 1990 to 1997 and arrived with the release of Houston-based La Mafia's synth-driven “Estas Tocando Fuego” album in 1991. The record sold more than 1 million copies.

“It opened the floodgates,” said Armando “Mando” Lichtenberger, La Mafia's keyboardist and producer.

Major labels such as Sony Discos, CBS, EMI/Capitol, BMG and Arista Texas set up offices in Texas. This was the era when Corpus Christi singer Selena earned her title as the Mexican Madonna with songs like “Bidi Bidi Bom Bom” and San Antonio's Emilio Navaira was being called the Garth Brooks of the genre.

“It was like overnight,” said Ramon Hernandez, founder of the Hispanic Entertainment Archives and a Latin music journalist. “It exploded.”

But there were hints of Tejano's decline before Selena's death at age 23.

Many forget that she was making a major move into the English-language market, years in the making. That same year, Navaira moved to Nashville, Tenn., and went country. The goal was to cross over into the mainstream and out of the regional genre.

“People forget that Tejano lost its Madonna and Garth Brooks at the same time,” said Michael Morales, a Grammy-winning producer who worked with both singers. “There was nothing for the kids.”

Tejano is no longer a stand-alone category at the Grammy Awards. The Recording Academy chose to fold it into the Mexican regional category.

For the past few years, the San Antonio Stock Show & Rodeo has presented banda and regional Mexican acts. The biggest concert this year at the AT&T Center was ranchero singer Vicente Fernandez, who drew 17,300 fans — George Strait numbers.

Banda is here

Across town Sunday, in a retail strip center near Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland that's seen better days, a giant nightclub called Club Fuego (fire) — a hot spot for banda, regional Mexican and norteño — presented the legendary band Los Tigres Del Norte.

“They are a for-sure thing,” said Cesar Rios, an emcee and DJ better known to his fans at Club Fuego as Cesar K-OSO. He's also an on-air radio personality at La Ley Radio (95.7), which specializes in regional Mexican, banda, cumbia and norteño music.

From his vantage point above the young, mostly single, booty-shaking, boot-kicking humanity, he gets an eyeful of a scene reminiscent of “Urban Cowboy.”

“It's more of the Mexico crowd,” said Rios, 21. “They like to dance in a circle 'marcando la pista,' marking your territory (on the dance floor). Everybody's doing their own little moves.”

Who is listening

It's not a sleepy scene at the two clubs where rancheros, dudes and young women congregate, looking like they stepped out of Sheplers Western Wear or a Mexican music video.

San Antonio Police Department statistics show that officers were called to El Fuerte (the strong one) 75 times this year. They received 30 calls from Club Fuego.

By comparison, SAPD was called out 38 times this year for similar problems to Far West Rodeo, a popular country live-music venue and dance spot on the Northeast Side.

The crowds at El Fuerte and Club Fuego are a younger, bar-hopping demographic of working-class Mexican Americans, Mexicans and immigrants. It's not predominantly the so-called “Little Monterrey” or “Sonterra-rey” crowd of more affluent North Side Mexican newcomers, say the clubs' operators.

“It makes you feel like you're in Mexico,” said one El Fuerte regular named Ana. “Lots of people can't go back to their towns.”

One young man says he likes El Fuerte because it's “puro ranchero.”

Not unlike post-election polls, the local Latino music scene reflects generational, cultural and demographic changes — an audience that enjoys menudo and PSY's “Gangnam Style.”

“If you go to El Fuerte or El Fuego, you'll see a lot of the young audience there,” said Jorge “El Güero” Hernandez, who won a Grammy Award in the banda category last year.

“It gets pretty crunk in there. There's a lot of people from Piedras Negras, from all the border — more Mexican than Tejano.”

A Mexico City-born owner of a popular North Side restaurant described El Fuerte's music scene like this: “It's Mexico's country music.”

“Mexico City has a lot of European influences, classical. Northern music is very Mexican music. It's roots are in the Mexican Revolution. Some of my Mexican customers go to El Fuerte. My Stone Oak customers from Mexico wouldn't be caught dead there.”

Outside the neighborhood, posh Stone Oak Mexicans are more likely to be found enjoying Mexican pop and international sounds at Club Rio. Closer still, you'll find them dancing to electro house at Nektar Lounge or the salsa at Grand Agave, which will start a banda night next month.

But El Fuerte and Club Fuego are crowded without this clientele.

The scene

Sunday is ladies night at El Fuerte: “¡Domingos Explosivos!” The crowd shows up after midnight. Manager Manny Z came up with the nightclub's concept three years ago.

He operates the nightclub and live-music venue at the old Tiffany Billiards for its owner, San Antonio-based Hilltop Entertainment Inc. They opened with a splash with a concert by Ramon Ayala in 2009.

Most nights, the crowds, which Manny Z characterized as “older,” range in age from 27 to 40. On Sunday, that drops to 21 to 35.

Concerts are always on Saturdays at El Fuerte. Fridays are college nights and draw about 800 people. Sundays top out with more than 1,000 with DJ Niño and DJ Electro.

Jesus Olvera, better known at El Fuerte as MC Pistolero, organized a special midnight tribute show for Rivera on Friday. The scene was as insane and hyper as banda's outrageous tuba-driven beat. “The people loved her a lot,” Olvera said in Spanish.

Pistolero whipped fans into a frenzy as they waited for the show by yelling into the microphone, “Jenni Rivera, no muerta,” over and over.

Rivera impersonator Odalis Aranjin walked onstage 30 minutes late to chants of “Jenni, Jenni, Jenni.” The screams were deafening for the glamorous, bewigged stand-in as she emotionally lip-synced songs “Porque No Le Calas,” “Mi Forma de Sentir” and others.

Backstage, the longtime Rivera impersonator explained the late singer's magic. “She was a hardworking lady, a very independent woman,” Aranjin said. “She never needed a man.”

Sarli says many who frequent her El Fuerte nightclub don't have a Texas ID. “They don't have anywhere else to go.”

Banda gets radio airplay, but the scene really operates under the radar. Sarli uses social media but relies on street-level promotion to reach “circulating undocumented people.”

“They congregate at flea markets and Mexican grocery stores. That's how they find us,” Sarli said. “It's like the old chitlin circuit, when you'd have to go to the black side of town and look at the poster boards on telephone poles,” said author Joe Nick Patoski.

Tejano producer and 11-time Grammy winner Gilbert Velasquez calls it a new era. “We're being overwhelmed by Mexicans,” he said.

“I'm not saying that in a bad way. They're migrating this way legally and otherwise. This genre of music is more Mexican than American. The Tejano genre is getting eclipsed. It's getting wiped out.

“Texas is like an island, and Tejano lives in Texas. Banda is nationwide — Atlanta, New York and in Nashville, man.”